


Joan Leaven is Alive

by Newhieghts



Series: Character Introspection [4]
Category: Cube (1997 2002 2004)
Genre: Gen, I don’t have any tags for this, however I’m going to write more cube because I’m in love with Leaven, this is Leaven moments after the ending of Cube 1997 and having a Not Good Time, this is a very meaningless cube thought piece tha nobody is going to read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21978511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newhieghts/pseuds/Newhieghts
Summary: Joan Leaven is alive.She doesn’t quite know how or why.She fears, not for long. Something to do with the metal rod in her chest.(No, I don’t know why I’m writing incoherent Cube fic in 2019)
Series: Character Introspection [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1260443
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21





	Joan Leaven is Alive

Joan Leaven is alive. 

Just about. 

With a two foot rod through her chest and blood seeping from the resulting wound, but alive. 

Unconscious, but alive.

Waking up and alive.

Next to her lies David Worth with a similar wound in his stomach. Red blood ageing brown on the sweaty white t-shirts they wear. 

A continuous drip, drip, drip of blood splattering on the circuit style floor panels. 

A sound that means that they are alive, however little. The heart still beats, the blood still flows, and life still prevails. 

It’s nothing short of a miracle in this Cube. 

Helen Holloway is dead at the bottom of the shell. Quentin is smear across the walls. Rennes is a faceless body. 

They might not be the first. 

Leaven doesn’t think they’ll be the last either. 

Like Worth said; you have to use it, or it’s pointless. Their game is up now. They are left here to rot, to die in a worse way than all the others. 

They do not have the luxury of a surprising trap. They don’t even have fear. That have the inevitability of dehydration and blood loss and the sharp pain that shoots up her chest if she shifts even an atom out of place. 

She didn’t want this. 

That’s obvious, but everything in this Cube should’ve been obvious if she was paying attention. 

If she had realised the secret of the numbers, the powers of primes, they might never have crumbled into dread and death and despair.

If they had put thought into just how Kazan has made his way around the Cube instead of snapping at his unfamiliar habits, maybe more of them would’ve been walking out with Kazan. 

But they aren’t and they won’t be any time soon. 

Leaven listens to the grinding of the room move around the Cube. It settles and Leaven’s chest is put at ease. 

“I want to go home,” she dribbles blood with lips pressed to the ground. “Please, god, I want to go home.”

They were there. They were moments from freedom. The light was blinding and white and hurt her eyes but it was there for the taking. 

It was boundless human stupidity and she could’ve seized it with both hands if that same stupidity had not drove a broken door handle through her chest.

She said she could live with it. She had thought she could live with boundless human stupidity. Hell, she could’ve fallen in love with it. 

Though she’s the furthest thing from an English major, she knows that ‘could’ is a modal verb and never to be relied upon. 

It’s why she isn’t a English major, she laughs and regrets for the shooting pain. Maths was structured and sturdy and scratched into stone. Maths was scratched into the walls of the Cube with frantic calculations that were made too late. 

Maths was supposed to save her. Supposed to save all of them. Chance, probability, odds, they were never on their side. Wasn’t on Rennes side when his boot didn’t set off the stinging spray of acid. Wasn’t on Holloway’s side when they lowered her down the side. 

Certainly wasn’t on Leaven’s side when she was skewered. 

But math, that beautiful constant thing, it had protected them. They had taken shelter under the numbers and rejoiced because shit! They might just make it.

They might just’ve made it, Leaven thinks with a bitter taste in her mouth that is not blood. 

“I don’t want to die,” she says again, weak and pathetic and for nobody but herself to hear. Worth’s eyes stare at her glassy and empty. She cries out. Then again, from the pain.

Joan Leaven is alive, just about. Against all the odds, and the chances, and the probability. Logic and maths dictates that she should not be. 

Yet here she lies. Empty and singing with pain, alive. Defying her nature, defying her beloved numbers. 

Joan Leaven has never been much of a rule breaker. She wonders and thinks and muses, for there is not much else left to do when she cannot move except for her eyes to stare at the intricate patterns of the wall, why her body has decided to become a rebel in her final moments. 

Moments? Minutes? Hours? 

Whatever. Who cares. Everything is meaningless in the Cube. Everyone is equal. Everyone is dead. All that matters is the numbers printed in neat rows. All that matters is the numbers. 

Joan Leaven is alive, until the numbers spit out the odds she should’ve had. Nonexistent odds. Until the numbers decide to send her off. She is alive, until her numbers sort themselves out. 

She begins to count down.


End file.
